Daniel Levy

SUNY: Stony Brook University, Sociology, Faculty Member

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Address: Brooklyn, New York, United States

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Papers by Daniel Levy

The politics of commemoration The Holocaust, memory and trauma

Assuming that the consequences of devastating events for individuals and collectivities run diffe... more Assuming that the consequences of devastating events for individuals and collectivities run different courses, why do we use the word " trauma " to explain a wide array of social and cultural phenomenon? Trauma has traveled far to become a key not only to explain, like originally conceived wounds to the body, but injuries to spirit, culture, society and politics. Trauma has proliferated into a metaphor deployed to explain almost everything unpleasant that happens to us as individuals and as members of political communities. How do we conceptualize the transition from the trauma of the individual to the traumatized community? What does trauma mean for a theoretical formulation of collective memory? What are the social, legal and political dimensions that inform representations of collective traumata? Wulf Kansteiner (2004) provides an insightful history of the metaphoric diffusion of trauma, criticizing its loose deployment as inadequate. He points out that it is misleading...

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Cosmopolitan Memory and Human Rights

... of neo-national closure, requires a cosmopolitan approach for its analysis' (Beck 2004: ... more ... of neo-national closure, requires a cosmopolitan approach for its analysis' (Beck 2004: 133). In this light, a cosmopolitan methodological shift derives its analytical force from elucidating ... of actual cosmopolitanization and the persistence or resurgence of political self-descriptions ...

Kosmopolitische Erinnerung und reflexive Modernisierung: Der politische Diskurs der Zwangsarbeitsentschädigung

Soziale Welt, 2005

Zusammenfassung: Dieser Beitrag analysiert, wie gegenwärtige Globalisierungs-und Europäisierungsp... more Zusammenfassung: Dieser Beitrag analysiert, wie gegenwärtige Globalisierungs-und Europäisierungsprozesse die Koordinaten kollektiver Erinnerung verändern. Kollektive Erinnerung findet, so die konventionelle Annahme, in einem nationalstaatlichen Rahmen statt. Reflexive Modernisierung stellt diese weitgehend unhinterfragte Verbindung zwischen kollektiver Erinnerung und Nationalstaatlichkeit jedoch zur Debatte. Am Beispiel des politischen Diskurses über NS-Zwangsarbeitsentschädigung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland lassen sich zwei Entwicklungslinien aufzeigen: Zum einen zeichnet sich eine Kosmopolitisierung kollektiver Erinnerung ab, die die Grenzen des Nationalstaats sprengt und die Erinnerung und Geschichte des »Anderen« reflexiv anerkennt und einbindet; zum anderen lässt sich als Reaktion auf diese Entkopplung von kollektivem Gedächtnis und Nationalstaat eine Re-Nationalisierung der Erinnerung ausmachen. Dabei spielt vor allem die Betonung der eigenen nationalen Opfer, im Gegensatz zu einer kosmopolitischen Perspektive, die die Opfer des Nationalen im Visier hat, eine zentrale Rolle. Im Zuge dieser spannungsreichen Prozesse erfährt der Nationalstaat vor dem Hintergrund einer sich entwickelnden transnational-europäischen Erinnerungslandschaft eine folgenreiche Umdeutung. Diese Entwicklungen tragen an signifikanter Stelle zur Theorie Reflexiver Modernisierung bei. Insbesondere lässt sich die zentrale Figur der Reflexivität (mit ihrer Betonung von Reflex) um die in ihrer Bedeutung steigenden Dimension der Reflexion (im Sinne einer bewussten Gestaltung neuer Erinnerungskulturen) bereichern und erweitern. 1. Kollektive Erinnerung im Spannungsfeld von De-Nationalisierung und Re-Nationalisierung Spricht man von kollektiver Erinnerung, dann verweist dies wie kaum ein anderer Begriff auf den klassisch gedachten Nationalstaat und die darin gefasste Einheit und Homogenität von Raum, Zeit und Bevölkerung. Die nationalstaatliche Optik dominiert die mittlerweile umfassende Literatur zum Thema kollektive Erinnerung (Nora 1990; Francois/Schulze 2001; Young 1997). Gegenwärtige Prozesse der Globalisierung und Europäisierung lassen diese Einheit, so unsere These, jedoch fragwürdig werden, ohne dass dabei sinnvoll von einem Ende kollektiver Erinnerung gesprochen werden könnte. Die Koordinaten kollektiver Erinnerung haben sich vielmehr geändert-und dies in mehrerlei Hinsicht. War vormals der Nationalstaat ein gleichsam natürlicher Rahmen kollektiver Erinnerung, 1 so zeigt sich gegenwärtig ein grundlegender Wandel dieses Verhältnisses: Kollektive Erinnerung löst sich unter den Bedingungen reflexiver Modernisierung aus dem nationalstaatlichen Container, wie sich auch Prozesse einer Neuverortung und Rekonfiguration kollektiver Erinnerung im nationalen Rahmen beobachten lassen. Diesen Wandel bzw. diese Gleichzeitigkeit von nationalstaatlicher Entgrenzung und Begrenzung kollektiver Erinnerung bezeichnen wir als 1) Dieses »natürliche« Verhältnis von Nationalstaat und kollektiver Erinnerung bürgt in dieser Lesart dann auch für Authentizität, die vor dem Hintergrund einer angeblich homogenen, künstlichen und geschichtsleeren globalen Kultur verloren gehe (vgl. Smith 1995). Die dabei unterstellte Homogenisierung globaler Kultur, die einen Authentizitätsverlust von Erinnerung nach sich ziehen soll, lässt sich empirisch jedoch nicht feststellen (vgl. Friedman 1990; Pieterse 1998). * Dieser Beitrag stammt aus dem Teilprojekt C7 »Transnationale Erinnerung: Vergebung und Wiedergutmachung im globalen Zeitalter«. Wir danken der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft, die dieses Projekt im Rahmen des Sonderforschungsbereichs 536 »Reflexive Modernisierung« fördert. Benedikt Köhler und Albert Gröber danken wir für konstruktive Kritik.

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Daniel Levy - Contested Citizenship: Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe (review) - Social Forces 86:1

Comment on Kate Nash/1. States Make Human Rights and Human Rights Abuses Make States

Sociologica, 2011

These are exciting times for students of human rights revolutions (not to mention those participa... more These are exciting times for students of human rights revolutions (not to mention those participating in them). Popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and possibly elsewhere demanding regime change are raising expectations of democratization and the attendant materialization of human rights. We hear about the "people's will," "spontaneous calls for rights," and the potential obstacles to reform in the alleged form of cultural and often essentialized attributes (e.g. Islam, tribalism). What all these assertions have in common is that they pay insufficient attention to the opportunities that particular state structures afford democratic outcomes and the concomitant prospects for the realization of human rights. Kate Nash provides an invaluable and timely corrective by reminding us that the human rights regime remains a state-centric enterprise. She sets out to "explore variations in state formation that are relevant to the institutionalisation of human rights. […] The historically conditioned structures of 'actually existing' states, the social relationships in which they are embedded, the economic resources to which they have access, and the administration of human rights norms in global governance, officials acting in the name of the state secure the conditions of their own positions in particular forms that result in quite different state formations. These differences in elite strategies and state formations are crucial to how human rights activists must orient themselves in order to realise human rights in practice." Considering the proliferation of culturological arguments (e.g. primordial tribalism) and other essentializing features clouding our understanding of whether and how human rights princi-

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Memories of Universal Victimhood: The Case of Ethnic German Expellees

German Politics and Society, 2005

Images of German victims have become a ubiquitous feature of political debates and mass-mediated ... more Images of German victims have become a ubiquitous feature of political debates and mass-mediated cultural events in recent years. This paper argues that changing representations of the Holocaust have served as a political cultural prism through which histories of German victimhood can be renegotiated. More specifically, we explore how the centrality of the Holocaust in Germany informs how the postwar expulsion of twelve million ethnic Germans has been remembered during the last sixty years. Most interpretations of the destruction of European Jewry and the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia and their corresponding memory cultures treat these memories as mutually exclusive manifestations of competing perceptions of national self understanding. We suggest that memories of both the Holocaust and expulsions are entwined. The Holocaust remains a specific event but also spans a universalizing human rights discourse that conceals the magnitude of the Holocaust as a p...

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Institutionalising the past: shifting memories of nationhood in German education and immigration legislation

Studies in the Presence of the Past

The institutionalization of cosmopolitan morality: the Holocaust and human rights

Journal of Human Rights, 2004

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the Future of the Past: Historiographical Disputes and Competing Memories in Germany and Israel

History and Theory, 1999

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Reflexive particularism and cosmopolitanization: the reconfiguration of the national

Global Networks, 2011

In this article we examine the cosmopolitanization of national memory cultures as a matter of ref... more In this article we examine the cosmopolitanization of national memory cultures as a matter of reflexive particularism, referring to negotiations over 'the national' driven by the endogenization of European norms and discourses. Reflexive particularism emerges from a historically specific memory imperative that issues two demands-first, that national polities reckon with the Other, and second, that they engage with, critique and challenge exclusionary or heroic modes of nationalism. Our findings, based on the analysis of official discourse and 60 open group discussions conducted in Austria, Germany and Poland, suggest that reflexive particularism is manifested in an ongoing negotiation between variable modes of national belonging and cosmopolitan orientations toward the supranational or pan-European. More specifically, reflexive particularism is expressed in co-evolving articulations of Europeanness and shared European memory practices that include: affirmative and ambivalent perspectives; sceptical narratives about nationhood (for example those that emphasize legacies of perpetratorship); and a disposition to (ex)change perspectives and recognize the claims of Others.

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Memory Unbound

European Journal of Social Theory, 2002

This article analyzes the distinctive forms that collective memories take in the age of globaliza... more This article analyzes the distinctive forms that collective memories take in the age of globalization. It studies the transition from national to cosmopolitan memory cultures. Cosmopolitanism refers to a process of `internal globalization' through which global concerns become part of local experiences of an increasing number of people. Global media representations, among others, create new cosmopolitan memories, providing new epistemological vantage points and emerging moral-political interdependencies. The article traces the historical roots of this transformation and outlines the theoretical foundations for the emergence of cosmopolitan memories through an examination of how the Holocaust has been remembered in Germany, Israel and the USA in the course of the last fifty years. It is precisely the abstract nature of `good and evil' that symbolizes the Holocaust, which contributes to the extra-territorial quality of cosmopolitan memory. As such, memories of the Holocaust con...

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Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe: Transatlantic Relations After the Iraq War

Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2006

Jlv ■ i TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONS AFTEltTHE IRAU^ak VA1 EDITED BY DANIEL LEW, MAX PENSSCY, JOHN TOR... more

Sovereignty transformed: a sociology of human rights

The British Journal of Sociology, 2006

This paper examines how global interdependencies and the consolidation of a human rights discours... more This paper examines how global interdependencies and the consolidation of a human rights discourse are transforming national sovereignty. Social researchers frequently address the supremacy of state sovereignty and the absoluteness of human rights as mutually exclusive categories. However, rather than presupposing that a universal rights discourse is necessarily leading to the demise of sovereignty, we suggest that an increasingly de-nationalized conception of legitimacy is contributing to a reconfiguration of sovereignty itself. Through the analytic prism of historical memories-which refers to shared understandings specific pasts carry for present concerns of a political community-we provide an explanatory factor for the salience of human rights norms as a globally available repertoire of legitimate claim making. While states retain most of their sovereign functions, their legitimacy is no longer exclusively conditioned by a contract with the nation, but also by their adherence to a set of nation-transcending human rights ideals. Legitimacy is mediated by how willing states are to engage with 'judicial memories' of human rights abuses and their articulation in cosmopolitan legal frames. Empirically, we focus on war crime trials and how legal inscriptions of memories of human rights abuses are recasting the jurisdiction of International Law. Consequently, the readiness of states to engage with rights abuses is becoming politically and culturally consequential, as adherence to global human rights norms confers legitimacy.

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Cosmopolitanized Nations: Re-imagining Collectivity in World Risk Society

Theory, Culture & Society, 2013

The concept of the national is often perceived, both in public and academic discourse as the cent... more The concept of the national is often perceived, both in public and academic discourse as the central obstacle for the realization of cosmopolitan orientations. Consequently, debates about the nation tend to revolve around its persistence or its demise. We depart from this either-or perspective by investigating the formation of the ‘cosmopolitan nation’ as a facet of world risk society. Modern collectivities are increasingly preoccupied with debating, preventing and managing risks. However, unlike earlier manifestations of risk characterized by daring actions or predictability models, global risks can no longer be calculated or forecast. Accordingly, more influence accrues to the perception of risk, largely constructed by media representations. Cosmopolitanized risk collectivities are engendered through the anticipation of endangered futures which are, for the most part, communicated through an increasingly global media scape. While global media events produce shared exposure, risk c...

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Remembering a sociology of Human Rights

Culture & History Digital Journal, 2014

A sociology of human rights sounds almost like a contradiction in terms. Sociology is about socia... more A sociology of human rights sounds almost like a contradiction in terms. Sociology is about social groups, about particular experiences, about how people, embedded in space and time, make sense of their lives and give meaning to their world. It deals with power and interest and the social bases of our experiences. On the other hand, human rights are about human beings in general, without temporal or spatial references, not about groups and their boundaries. Human rights are about humanity, located in the world and connected to an inviolable nature. Global media representations, among others, create new cosmopolitan memories, providing new epistemological vantage points and emerging moral-political interdependencies. As such, memories of the Holocaust contribute to the creation of a common European cultural memory based on the abstract notion of human rights. Sociologically, a theory of human rights has to show how universal and particular memories co-exist, are reconciled etc. and what it means for the recognition of the "other", and the broadening of circles of solidarity.

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Recursive cosmopolitization: Argentina and the global Human Rights Regime

The British Journal of Sociology, 2010

This paper illustrates how varieties of cosmopolitanism are shaped through a mutually constitutiv... more This paper illustrates how varieties of cosmopolitanism are shaped through a mutually constitutive set of cultural dispositions and institutional practices that emerge at the interstices of global human right norms and local legal practices. Converging pressures of 'cosmopolitan imperatives' and the multiplicity of particularized manifestations are co-evolving in the context of intercrossings during which distinctive cosmopolitanisms are established. This complex relationship of global normative expectations and their local appropriations is elucidated through the dynamic of recursive cosmopolitization. Suggesting that, local problems are resolved with recourse to global prescriptions while local solutions are inscribed in international institutions consolidating the global Human Rights Regime. The Argentinean case carries conceptual and empirical weight as it underscores the recursivity of cosmopolitization by calibrating the tensions of universalism and particularism at the intersection of global, national and regional scales. Argentina is a paradigmatic instantiation for how cosmopolitanism can emanate in the periphery as local problems are globalized. This, in turn, has resulted in the institutionalization of a global Human Rights Regime which exercises normative and political-legal pressures on how states legitimately deal with human rights abuses. It is this cosmopolitan balance, rather than presuppositions of universalistic exogenous pressures or particularistic national exceptions, which is shaping the cultural and political relevance of human rights norms.

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Risk and the cosmopolitanization of solidarities

Journal of Risk Research

For classical sociologists, national solidarity was a response to the risks and uncertainties of ... more For classical sociologists, national solidarity was a response to the risks and uncertainties of modernity. National solidarity was said to provide the foundations for social order and justice (Durkheim), serve as the basis for political legitimacy (Weber), and address issues of (in)equality (Marx). Throughout the twentieth century, national solidarity seemed to perform these functions adequately, if often at the expense of those not belonging to the national community. However, with the demise of progress as a cultural prophylaxis to contain the future, it is often said that newly emergent world risks spell the end of solidarity. On this view, risk, individualization, and the cosmopolitanization of life worlds are contributing to the fragmentation of societies and pushing solidarity toward expiration. Yet, this jeremiad is based on an anachronistic notion of solidarity, which does not account for the recent adaptations of nationhood. In contrast, I argue that new global risks are not detrimental to the notion of solidarity but rather serve as a precondition for the emergence of cosmopolitanized solidarities. Global culture and political norms from human rights to environmentalism have catalyzed a reimagining of nationhood itself. In order to grasp new forms of solidarity which buttress this reimagined nationhood, I draw on Ulrich Beck's distinction between three historically specific iterations of the concept of risk, as something that: can be calculated; is malign and incalculable; has the potential to generate goods. For as the nature of foul weather lieth not in a shower or two of rain but in an inclination thereto of many days together, so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. (Hobbes and MacPherson 1982, 186) Introduction: risk and solidarity This article traces historical transformations of risk perceptions with a focus on how these changes correspond to varying forms of solidarity. The first section addresses some of the formative and lasting sociological conceptualizations of (national) solidarity, concentrating on the ways hazards of risk and conceptions of solidarity coincide with the nation state project and its postwar manifestations. The second part builds on Ulrich Beck's work and examines how solidarity finds its expression in the context of emerging 'Risk Societies, ' paying particular attention to the mutually constitutive tensions of cosmopolitan and neo-national responses. From the onset of modernity, uncertainty or rather its attempted containment has been a central organizing principle for political communities, theoretically and practically. Ever since Hobbes and the ARTICLE HISTORY

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Recursive cosmopolitization: Argentina and the global Human Rights Regime

The British journal of sociology, 2010

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Erinnerung im globalen Zeitalter: der Holocaust

by Natan Sznaider and Daniel Levy

The Cosmopolitanization of Holocaust Memory

by Natan Sznaider and Daniel Levy

Memories and Identities in Jewish Diasporas, 2007

Daniel Levy

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